BJPA Blog - refugeeshttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm
A blog by the Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ Stanford Universityen-usSat, 10 Dec 2016 01:09:31 -0500Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:55:00 -0500BlogCFChttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssadministrator@bjpa.orgadministrator@bjpa.orgadministrator@bjpa.orgno1947: Discrimination Against Shoah Survivors, and the Need for Zionismhttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/4/19/1947-Discrimination-Against-Shoah-Survivors-and-the-Need-for-Zionism
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<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Hashoah">Today</a> we remember between five and six million Jews whom the Nazis murdered, and look to the survivors still among us to bear witness to what they saw.</p>
<p>Of course, concentration camp survivors (and others who ended up in DP camps following the war) were not always accorded such honor and reverence as they often are today. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the image of the DP in sectors of the American public was too often an image of the pitiful victim, the uncivilized wretch, or the sneaky criminal. Today's installment of the J-Vault provides a glimpse into this larger topic, among numerous others.</p>
<p><strong>Special J-Vault for Yom HaShoah: </strong><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=5971"><em><strong>The Psychology of Jewish Displaced Persons</strong></em></a> (1947)</p>
<p>The title to this article is a bit deceptive. Its primary resonances today are less in relation to the human psyche, and more in relation to group issues of socioeconomic classes, race relations, and the need for Zionism.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>American Jewry today has little or no understanding of the Jewish Displaced Person. By and large, our ideas of the Jewish &quot;D.P.&quot; are built up entirely on descriptions of horror and hunger portrayed by fund raising appeals or on the contrasting stories of &quot;black marketeering,&quot; &quot;continual demanding,&quot; and &quot;unwillingness to work&quot; in blanket generalizations by newspapermen who often have interviewed some official who himself has little understanding of the Jewish Displaced Person or of what makes him act as he does.<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>It is easy to understand the point of view of the American, British or French army or UNRRA official who condemns the Jewish Displaced Person. Usually that official is an ordinary citizen who is part of the stream of thought and philosophy of his country, and he measures those he meets by the standards of this background... He tends to forget the fact that some people were more discriminated against than others, and being more deprived, may exhibit the results of the more difficult lives they have experienced, in behavior which will not make for peaceful living, quiet, and cleanliness. It is difficult for such an official to understand (and emotionally accept the idea) that those who exhibit such negative behavior are those who need the most patience and help. More often, instead, the Jewish Displaced Person is characterized as ungrateful, unclean, lazy or unambitious...<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>It must be understood that that which may have helped a person survive concentration camp does not necessarily help him in his future adjustments after liberation. By and large, these abilities may retard his after liberation adjustment. The Jewish group attitude, except in occasional instances, was opposed to the &quot;law and order&quot; of the Nazis. &quot;Law and order&quot;&mdash;after liberation&mdash;continued for many to be something to oppose. It is difficult, for example, for the Jewish Displaced-Person who is so close to hunger, to realize that it was good for him to black market and do anything else that would oppose authority (under the Nazis) but that now, under an Allied power, he is to accept freely whatever limitations they see fit to set on him...<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>Another aspect of the Jewish ex-concentration camp inmate's attitude is his resentment of the general population in the nearby and surrounding towns in Germany and Austria. Most of the general population represent to the Jews their oppressors and supporters of the oppression against them. That they should be treated theoretically on an equal plane with the general population after their years of suffering only adds to their resentment of the authority which imposes this policy. It is difficult for them to see why people who have had full rations, their families complete, their household furnishings, their positions and comparative security, should be given equal treatment with those who have lost everything. That the Jews should be restricted in movement when the non-Jews are not is also a basis for resentment. In general, the Jews from concentration camps do not look to the Allied or local authorities with any great degree of acceptance...<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>The British point of view is the most difficult for the Jew to understand. His attitude of treating all persons alike (an antithesis of the Nazi philosophy) has often been referred to by Jewish intellectuals as &quot;pseudo liberalism.&quot; The Jews feel that it is naive to treat emaciated, harassed victims with the same amounts of food, clothing and other materials as their oppressors. The British attitude is reminiscent of the Abraham Lincoln story of the wife who came upon the scene of her husband in life and death struggle with a huge bear. The wife, feeling she had to do something, said &quot;Go it husband! Go it bear!&quot; The Jew and anti-Nazi similarly want to know on whose side Britain is &mdash; the former Nazis or those who were their victims...<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>The longer Jews have to remain in lands where they can plan no future, the sooner will all Jewish behavior in these lands become more uniformly aggressive and difficult to work with. As time goes on without a bold and decisive plan, more and more insecurity will develop, and with it can be expected hostilities between native residents and Jews, selfishness, rivalry, suspicion and all the behavior expected in cases of severe dependency. With these, and aggravating these conditions, will be the daily increase of ill health, unsanitary conditions, ignorance due to lack of educational facilities, and unemployment with all its depressive characteristics...<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>Actually, even if all of the possible facilities for social adjustment of Jewish Displaced Persons were available in the occupied zones, (and this would be difficult to secure so long as Allied political aims dictate the general national internal policies), adjustment of the group in the occupied zones would be doomed to failure. There the D.P. is unwanted by the populace, and he faces daily risks of having physical harm done him, when and if the Allied forces are withdrawn. There he daily faces open and veiled discrimination in finding a job, getting a place to live, getting a business license, or even a telephone. Few, if any, of even the highest authorities are interested in seeing that he gets equal opportunity to build an individual economic and social existence. The recent measures of leniency to Nazis, loans to Germany and Austria, and granting of greater autonomy to local governments by the Allies are pretty clear indications of the future of the Jew in these countries...<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>In work with most of the small handful of immigrants who have already arrived in the United States, the same problems which displaced persons have exhibited in Europe have been found, but in aggravated form. The same techniques which they developed in the process of self-preservation in the concentration camps are often their main &quot;standbys&quot; of behavior in the new environment. Since these techniques have little or no application to life in America, they become useless appendages which do not help to &quot;make friends and influence people.&quot;... His seething hostility against a Nazi government (tied up with a general resentment based on his deprivations) is transferred to the new world about him. The Americans, in turn, cannot understand him. They are indifferent to the problems of Nazism, which they prefer to consider distant and of the past...<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>America and other lands are reluctant to open their doors to such a group. To sit idly by and philosophize on the sensibility or justice of this or that plan is only to draw out the daily growing problem. The greatest number of the group have expressed the wish to be resettled in Palestine. They have learned of the failure of colonization projects in forgotten and little populated parts of the world. They fear the growing anti-Semitism of lands such as Argentina.<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>Their behavior continually voices the question, &quot;whom can we trust?&quot; They have been able to trust few in the past, except for people who have seen and understood the meaning of their experiences. They want to be among their own, and instinctively express the feeling that only in Palestine will they have people to come to, who will receive them and want them and give them security. In Palestine, the readjustment of the Jew is within the realm of possibility. In the occupied zones, it is not. Here the Jewish Displaced Person can build and work for the future and feel that it is permanent. In the cooperative farms and groups, he gains a feeling of group belonging, so akin to the need for family life and security. Here, he can find understanding of the problems and experiences he has faced, because many of the Jews of Palestine are themselves refugees from the concentration camps and seek the adjustment of the new refugees as an ideological goal...&nbsp; Here too, he can work out his need for authoritarian leadership learned in the concentration camp, and gradually learn participation and democratic methods within the working group...<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>Never before in the history of social work has it been necessary to plan for so large a group of disturbed people. Only by introduction of wholesome group life can any progress be expected. As it stands now, every day away from such a therapeutic atmosphere is a day of further regression. Eventually, and not too far in the future, it will be too late.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><em><strong><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=5971">More information...</a><br />
</strong></em></p>
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J-Vaultisraelacculturationhistorygenociderefugeesholidayssocial issueszionismholocaustThu, 19 Apr 2012 11:55:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/4/19/1947-Discrimination-Against-Shoah-Survivors-and-the-Need-for-ZionismTishah B'Av 5771http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/9/Tishah-BAv-5771
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<p><em>(Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, </em>Francesco Hayez)</p>
<p>For <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B'Av">Tishah B'Av</a> today, excerpts from <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=6530">&quot;Temple and Synagogue&quot;</a> by Rabbi Neil GIllman, from <a href="http://www.shma.com">Sh'ma</a> in <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/results.cfm?PublicationName=Sh%27ma%3A%20A%20Journal%20of%20Jewish%20Responsibility&amp;VolumeIssue=Vol%2E37%2Fno%2E642">June 2007</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Bible knows two models of sacred space. On one model, what may be called &ldquo;intrinsic sacred space,&rdquo; God chooses one point on earth to reveal God&rsquo;s presence. That point becomes <em>axis mundi</em>, the center of the world, around which the rest of the world is structured in descending levels of sanctity. The<br />
source for this model is... the binding of Isaac. Abraham is dispatched to &ldquo;the land of Moriah,&rdquo; to offer Isaac as a sacrifice &ldquo;on one of the heights which I<br />
[God] will point out to you.&rdquo; Subsequently, in II Chronicles 3:2, Moriah becomes the spot on which Solomon builds the Temple...</p>
<p>...The second model may be called &ldquo;extrinsic sacred space.&rdquo; Here, any spot on earth can become the center of the world. In the Bible, this model is illustrated by the Israelite encampment during the desert wanderings. The camp could be located at any place in the wilderness, but wherever it stood, the sanctuary was at its center...</p>
<p>...The Temple, intrinsic sacred space, could only be in Jerusalem. But the synagogue could be wherever a minyan of Jews with their Torah scroll chose to settle. God sanctifies intrinsic sacred space; the community sanctifies extrinsic sacred space.</p>
<p>Jeremiah 29 contains the text of a letter sent by Jeremiah to the community of exiles in Babylonia. It is an extraordinary document. In it, God counsels the exiles to &ldquo;build houses and live in them, plant fields and eat their fruit, take wives and beget sons and daughters; . . . multiply there. And seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper.&rdquo; Then, &ldquo;When you call Me and<br />
come and pray to Me, I will give heed to you. You will search for Me and find Me. I will be at hand for you and I will restore your fortunes. And I will gather you from all the nations, and I will bring you back to the place from which I have exiled you.&rdquo;</p>
<p>This letter... affirms the religious legitimacy of extrinsic sacred space. Its theological basis is a statement about God. God&rsquo;s power is not bounded by geography... One of the traditional names for God is <em>HaMakom</em>, literally &ldquo;The Place.&rdquo; But according to the rabbinic understanding of that name, God is &ldquo;the place&rdquo; of the world, not the other way around. God does not inhabit space. The exiled community can flourish but it cannot have a Temple; that is reserved for Jerusalem. But it can still worship God without a Temple, without sacrifices, through the words of prayer. &ldquo;Instead of bulls, we will pay [with] the offerings of our lips.&rdquo; (Hosea 6:3)</p>
<p>This pattern goes a long way toward explaining the ambiguities of our relationship to Israel, both land and state. For centuries, we prayed and dreamed of a return to Zion and the rebuilding of the Temple; we worship facing Jerusalem; we conclude Yom Kippur and our Passover sedarim with the words, &ldquo;Next year in Jerusalem.&rdquo; Yet we remain here. Ironically, it is precisely our religious structures that make it possible for us to live an authentic Jewish religious life anywhere on earth. We carry our religion on our backs. Halakhah enables us to worship God at every moment of our lives, wherever we may be...</p>
</blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
beliefsynagoguestheologyrefugeesreligionholidaysjewish textprayerspiritualityTue, 09 Aug 2011 09:34:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/9/Tishah-BAv-5771From the J-Vault: American Jewish Politics 100 Years Agohttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/5/24/From-the-JVault-American-Jewish-Politics-100-Years-Ago
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<p>On a day when the Israeli Prime Minister will address the U.S. Congress, it is worth zooming out to look at Jewish involvement with American government from a more distant perspective -- to ask, for example: with what were American Jewish political advocates concerned a century ago?</p>
<p>Let's find out.</p>
<p><strong>This week, from the J-Vault: <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=5500"><em>The Government of the United States and Affairs of Interest to the Jews</em></a> </strong>(1911)</p>
<p>This excerpt from the <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/results.cfm?PublicationName=American%20Jewish%20Year%20Book">American Jewish Yearbook </a>contains the following interesting items, among others:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sen. Lee S. Overman (N. C.) introduces bill (S. 4514), providing for a $10 head tax, an educational test, the production of certificate of good character, the possession of $25, and other restrictive features [for immigration policy]...</p>
<p>Sen. Joseph F. Johnston (Ala.) submits a report (No. 81), on the bill (S. 404) introduced by him on March 22, 1909, for the proper observance of Sunday as a day of rest in the District of Columbia...</p>
<p>Rep. Adolph J. Sabath (111.), in a speech in the House, denounces the Immigration Commission for its &quot;libel&quot; on the Jewish people in its report on the White Slave Traffic...</p>
<p>After debate, in the course of which Senators Bailey (Tex.) and Money (Miss.) pay tribute to Jewish people, Senate passes bill (S. 404), introduced by Senator J. F. Johnston (Ala.), on March 22, 1909, for the proper observance of Sunday as a day of rest in the District of Columbia, amended so as to exempt from its penalties persons who observe as a day of rest any other day of the week than Sunday...</p>
<p>Rep. Everis A. Hayes (Cal.) introduces bill (H. R. 21,342), providing that the naturalization laws shall apply only to &quot; white persons of the Caucasian race.&quot;...</p>
<p>Rep. Everis A. Hayes (Cal.) introduces bill (H. R. 24,993), providing that Section 2169 of the Revised Statutes, which accords the right of naturalization to &quot;free white persons &quot; and Africans, shall not be construed so as to prevent &quot;Asiatics who are Armenians, Syrians, or Jews from becoming naturalized citizens.&quot;</p>
</blockquote>
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community relationsdemocracyJ-Vaulthistoryrefugeesreligion and statesocial issuespolicypolitical behaviorgovernmentimmigrationTue, 24 May 2011 08:50:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/5/24/From-the-JVault-American-Jewish-Politics-100-Years-AgoSpecial J-Vault for Yom HaShoahhttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/4/29/Special-JVault-for-Yom-HaShoah
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<p>This Monday, May 2, marks <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_HaShoah">Yom Hashoah,</a> Holocaust Remembrance Day. In honor of this important occasion of communal memory, we have prepared a special installment of our<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/JVault"> J-Vault series,</a> which highlights historical materials in BJPA's holdings. <br />
<br />
The publications below, written by American Jewish communal professionals in 1937 - 1939, offer a fascinating (and sometimes chilling) glimpse into American Jewish perceptions of the situation of Europe's Jews during a time when Nazi antisemitic persecutions had begun to unfold, but had not yet nearly reached their horrific apogee. They are all from the journal <em>Jewish Social Service Quarterly</em>, which is now the <a href="http://www.jcsana.org/articlenav.php?id=15"><em>Journal of Jewish Communal Service</em></a><em>.<br />
</em></p>
<p><strong>This week from the J-Vault: Publications from the late 1930s</strong></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;"><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=10960"><strong>Jewish Morale in the Present Situation</strong></a> (September 1937)<br />
Distressed by the oppression of German Jews, Morris D. Waldman nonetheless held out hope for the project of emancipation and Jewish integration into Diaspora societies. He saw in certain Jewish and Zionist perspectives echoes of the Nazi &quot;theories that the Jews are a distinct race, alien, unadaptable in the western world&quot;. <em>&quot;Despite intolerable provocation,&quot; he wrote, &quot;...we must place our faith in the substantial values of civilization and submit to the restraints of civilized people.&quot;</em><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=10961"><strong>Jewish Problems and Activities Overseas </strong></a>(September 1937)<br />
Joseph C. Hyman described the coordination of Jewish relief efforts abroad. &quot;The tragedy that is today taking place in Germany,&quot; he wrote, is &quot;symptomatic of almost world-wide anti-Jewish activity.&quot;<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=10970"><strong>Race and Race Prejudice</strong></a> (December 1937)<br />
Franz Boas endeavored to &quot;show the absurdity of the whole race-theory which is the basis of Nazi political theory.&quot; He also discussed prejudice in America: &quot;Unfortunately, we are not free of tendencies that point in the same direction. Prejudice against the Negro is the most striking and probably most dangerous one.&quot;<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=10748"><strong>Problems of Minority Groups</strong></a> (September 1938)<br />
&nbsp;Oscar I. Janowsky described in depth the situation of Jews and other vulnerable minorities in the Europe of 1938. &quot;The Jew is attacked first because he is the weakest and safest enemy,&quot; he wrote. But &quot;Behind the smokescreen of anti-Semitism, the liberties of all are destroyed... So long as Nazism and Fascism prevail, there will be no peace for the true Christian, for the true scholar, for the true proponent of a better world, any more than for the Jew.&quot;<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=10759"><strong>&nbsp;The Social Pathology of the Refugee Problem</strong></a> (March 1939)<br />
Melvin M. Fagen examined the web of causes he perceived to be behind the crisis facing Jews. &quot;Though our course is not clear,&quot; he declared, &quot;and the future uncertain, there is one thing we can do, one duty we owe to ourselves and to posterity. It is to know why these wars have come about, why the refugee problem or the Jewish problem or the problem of Fascism arises.&quot;<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=10746"><strong>Jewish Ideology in the Present Crisis</strong></a>(March 1939)<br />
&quot;[S]ince 1933, millions of Jews have been deprived of either their lives or the means to their livelihood,&quot; wrote Ira Eisenstein. &quot;Political rights and economic opportunities have been ruthlessly taken from them and, at the present writing, it appears that no less than four million Jews in Central Europe alone will be compelled to migrate from the lands in which they and their ancestors have lived for centuries.&quot; Unaware that the immediate future would yield events far more monstrous than these, Eisenstein nonetheless realized that the happenings of his day would necessitate a reconsideration of the &quot;various alternatives, which Jewish thinkers contemplated as the solution to the so-called Jewish problem during the whole post-emancipation era&quot;. Strikingly, he wrote: <em>&quot;It is not assimilation which has failed; it is democracy which has failed, that very democracy which made possible assimilation.&quot;</em></p>
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<p>We welcome your reactions in the comments section below.</p>
<p>Have a meaningful Yom HaShoah.</p>
J-VaulthistorygenociderefugeesholidaysantisemitismholocaustimmigrationFri, 29 Apr 2011 09:10:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/4/29/Special-JVault-for-Yom-HaShoah